Virgin Money delivers smarter digital experiences with DocuSign eSignature

Virgin Money is currently recognised as the sixth largest bank in the UK with over 6.5 million customers. Since being acquired by CYBG, owners of Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank in 2018, it has realigned its strategy, placing an emphasis on digital-first connections with new and existing customers.

As part of its digital transformation, Virgin Money identified workflow issues, particularly around contract signing response times, a lack of visibility in the signing chain, and internal staff inefficiencies caused by out-dated work procedures. Using DocuSign eSignature has enabled Virgin Money to enhance its customer experiences and improve efficiency by streamlining the sharing of financial agreements and contracts.

Defining smarter digital workflows with DocuSign

Virgin Money’s move to a digital-first operation relied on the business developing and deploying its own digital transformation. Once this was established, it quickly became evident that deploying DocuSign eSignature using an API interface would bring wider benefits to the business. This approach has enabled an end-to-end process from internal and external stakeholder documents to be transacted via DocuSign, then sent back in real time as the signature workflow is actioned.

Prior to using DocuSign eSignature, no e-signature tools were used within Virgin Money. The organisation relied upon traditional processes with limited access to technology to solicit appropriate digital signings. Employees would manually create agreements and contracts that would be required to be printed before being sent to customers and clients for wet signature approval.

In extreme cases, employees would have to physically deliver documents across multiple offices for signing by hand. This was not only labour intensive but also incredibly time consuming, slowing down overall efficiency. Due to slow response times, growth opportunities were also being missed.

Continual improvement and growth with DocuSign

DocuSign eSignature has provided Virgin Money with a robust document signing protocol delivering regulatory compliance, enhancing security, and adding flexibility into workflow routing with stakeholders. It has greatly improved business processing times and its use is growing as new teams and users are onboarded.

Virgin Money is using DocuSign eSignature across its Procurement, Legal, HR, Business Banking, Collections, Payments and Operational Risk teams. Procurement, for example, uses DocuSign eSignature for all contractual requirements, along with internal approval for expenditure and supplier contracts. It also adds an enhanced level of assurance to all third-party Regulatory approvals.

The Legal department uses eSignature to ensure legal agreements and internal approvals from executives and other corporate bodies in relation to regulatory compliance are adhered to, while the HR team uses it for Employment Contracts and ancillary documents, including production of Offer Letters and Contracts for Executive Joiners, as well as internal promotions and other ancillary contractual changes. It is also used by Trustees for the organisation’s Pension Scheme.

The company has seen exponential growth around usage of DocuSign eSignature, from a few hundred instances being used in the initial stages, to well over 17,000 envelopes in the current financial year to-date.

As a regulated bank in the UK, Virgin Money must adhere to regulatory expectations and best practise around such topics as Business Continuity and Information Security. It therefore works closely with the DocuSign account team to actively find the right solutions around supplier governance.

This was made achievable with DocuSign enabling a licensing review, proactively working with the bank to create a new financial model that enables digital capabilities with associated return of investment support.

“It’s a very stable service with little maintenance and minimal disruption from new functionality releases” Says McGeady, “We have worked collaboratively with DocuSign to recognise prohibitors, such as the licensing model, to effect change and expand the user base and associated use case examples.”

Additional benefits come in the form of increased productivity, and a greater visibility of the agreement chain has improved overall response rates. The ability to review and sign contracts on mobile devices has further improved efficiencies, allowing customers to manage the signing of agreements more seamlessly, regardless of location or time.

DocuSign is a key partner in driving digital change

Virgin Money is committed to its digital-first ambition and DocuSign eSignature has allowed the institution to deliver more timely and smarter solutions to its customers. However, as McGeady states: “we have the ambition and the ability to innovate, but we need to ensure we can quickly and responsively meet our customers’ needs in the face of stiff competition.”

As a result, Virgin Money will be looking to use current and future technology to focus on demonstrably improving and enhancing the customer experience. “At Virgin Money we are always looking at ways to innovate and deliver a world class, digital customer experience. DocuSign capability can help us to accelerate our journey of digitising our customer experience, while enabling us to scale and grow.”